Environmental Activists Fight Expansion of Gas Pipeline in Guilford

On the outskirts of Guilford County in the town of Oak Ridge, there’s a long alleyway of grass stretching between the trees as far as the eye can see.

Brenda Chaney’s farmhouse is in the middle of the path. Far beneath the surface: three pipes full of natural gas, mostly methane, obtained through hydraulic fracturing or fracking. The Williams Companies’ Transco natural gas pipeline, stretching from New York City to the southern tip of Texas, channels it underneath properties like Chaney’s. The company has operated in Guilford County for more than 75 years, its Transco pipeline supplying natural gas to Duke Energy, the region’s biggest power supplier.

When Chaney purchased the property nearly a decade ago, she had no idea what was beneath. Due to the pipeline easement on Chaney’s property, Williams has the right to what’s below the surface. Those rights were signed away, and pipes were built decades ago. Chaney and others are concerned about their safety and plans to expand the pipeline.

The company is planning to install more pipe for the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, or SSEP. The addition would expand Transco’s pipeline infrastructure by 24 miles, funneling pipeline 42 inches thick through portions of Guilford, Rockingham, Forsyth, and Davidson counties. Natural gas supporters say it’s cleaner than other fossil fuels. But the Environmental Defense Fund estimates, based on published field survey data, that natural gas pipelines nationwide are leaking as much as 2.6 million tons of methane each year.

Chaney is a registered Republican. People assume she’d be all for “drill, baby, drill,” she said. She’s really tired of judgment from those who don’t have a personal stake in the matter, she said.

“I see a lot of people trying to make this a political issue,” she said. “It’s not.”

“I’m talking to people from every single party,” she said. “It’s not about that. What we have asked for repeatedly is just transparency on the safety of these.”

‘No Warning System’

The federal government provides tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to encourage energy production on U.S. soil. Direct subsidies have been estimated at roughly $20 billion per year, with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

Williams plans to start pipeline construction in the third quarter of 2026, and start service in late 2027. But to move forward with the project, Williams needs approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). It’s a five-member board currently chaired by Mark Christie, tapped for the seat in January, the day President Donald Trump took office. The other three members are former President Joe Biden’s appointees. One seat is currently vacant.

In January, FERC announced that it would prepare an environmental assessment for SSEP.  Its projected publishing date will be November 7, followed by a 30-day public comment period. The typical comment period for an environmental impact statement is 90 days. FERC will have a deadline of February 5, 2026, to decide whether it considers the expansion necessary and appropriate.

During an April 17 county commission work session, Caroline Hansley, a campaign organizing strategist with the environmental advocacy group, Sierra Club, urged county leaders to produce a resolution against the company’s plans and send it to FERC, saying that the deciding body might take the county’s opinion into account when making permit decisions.

County commissioners asked Williams’ representatives numerous safety questions during a May 15 work session.

“We have a history of safe operations near community assets,” said Kyle Tarpley, who handles community and project outreach for Williams. Those assets include schools and churches like the ones the pipeline will be near.

The pipes are internally inspected once every six years, said Joey Page, a senior operations manager for Williams. They can remotely close valves to contain damage if a problem arises, said Rob Krenz, a project director with the company. 

But if there was a problem, District 4 Commissioner Mary Beth Murphy asked, how would nearby residents be notified?

“There’s no warning system,” Page said. “If we determine that there’s a risk, then Williams will determine who needs to be evacuated and they’ll take care of it.”

They would go door to door and work with the authorities, he said.

That doesn’t sit right with Chaney. 

“I’m like, ‘Come on guys, if you’ve got the proof, you would have it already out in front of everybody, like see how safe these are,’” she said.

Further investigation shows Williams doesn’t have a great safety record. In the last decade, per the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the company’s pipelines and compressor stations have had several fatal explosions or caught fire. A litany of safety violations has led to millions in fines.

The company also isn’t offering Chaney much in return for the extra pipe, she said.

For Chaney, it’s not just that it’s a lowball figure. It’s not just that her property value will plummet. It’s about her safety and the safety of her family. Her daughter lives in the house across the street, next to the pipeline. Her son planned to build a house where the company aims to build the pipe. He’s called that off.

“There is no amount of money that they can pay me that will make me feel good about this happening,” she said. 

“I need to know that there’s safety guidelines put in place so that we can live in Oak Ridge and enjoy where we are,” she said. “I understand that the rights of the individual don’t top the rights of society as a whole. But the rights of an individual should be concerned over the rights of a corporation to make bigger profits.”

‘Trying to Level the Playing Field’

Historically, natural gas pipelines run a disproportionately concentrated path through marginalized and vulnerable communities. From an Indigenous perspective, the pipeline is encroaching on a homeland that has been beloved by native people for centuries.

“People are pushing us at light speed to be capitalistic,” said Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. “Like, don’t value the Earth, don’t value the water. Don’t value your family, but value the dollar.”

Cavalier-Keck is advocating against the pipeline’s expansion. She co-founded 7 Directions of Service, an Indigenous-led environmental justice and community organizing collective in North Carolina, with her husband, Jason Crazy Bear Keck. They felt called to action when the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate extension project threatened to go through Cavalier-Keck’s hometown and tribal grounds. Cavalier-Keck and her husband have been organizing to stall and prevent the project for the last several years.

“I’m just trying to level the playing field of how to incorporate our values back. We have to stand up and protect what our ancestors protected,” Cavalier-Keck said.

It’s David versus Goliath, she said. But for the husband-and-wife team, the way they fight back against big corporations is to do it all. From local political action to buying billboards, taking buses to Washington, D.C., and taking legal action, nothing is off the table. 

In the chambers of the Old Guilford County Courthouse on June 5, activists lined the rows of chairs, wearing shirts adorned with pins, and waving signs.

District 6 Commissioner Brandon Gray-Hill, who represents the area in Guilford County where Williams is planning to add pipe, read a resolution urging the FERC to “meaningfully address safety and environmental concerns” in terms of the additional pipeline. It’s not exactly what activists had been pushing for, but it was something. 

The project “raises a range of concerns for citizens,” the statement read, including public safety risks, water resource impacts, and other environmental degradation.

According to the county, a copy of the resolution will be forwarded to FERC, as well as the North Carolina Utilities Commission, and to state and federal Guilford County representatives.

At the end of the meeting, the crowd celebrated even that small victory. County leaders heard them, they said. They hadn’t been ignored.

Chaney was more realistic.“This is not stopping them,” she said.

But she and others won’t stop trying.

Gale is a Report for America Corps member. Before joining The Assembly, she spent two years covering local government and community issues in Greensboro and Winston-Salem for Triad City Beat. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from North Carolina State University.

More by this author.